The present invention relates to an information processing system using IC tags.
In recent years, the arrival of a ubiquitously networked society has been increasingly anticipated and various techniques regarding the ubiquitously networked society have been proposed. Among others, RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification) technology has induced various new techniques and the development of new services from various aspects because the body of each RFID tag is minuscule and economical to fabricate. More specifically, RFID tags can be attached to various objects. In addition, it is very convenient to manage RFID-tagged objects.
One of these techniques consists of an RFID system having an interrogator and is described in JP-A-2002-353852. A bidirectional communication function is imparted to the interrogator. This makes it easy for an information processing device on a communication network, such as a cell phone, to read information on an RFID tag present in an RFID system.
In the above-described prior art technique, radio waves sent from the interrogator are modulated by the RFID tag based on information stored in the RFID tag itself. Therefore, either the interrogator or an information processing device (hereinafter referred to also as the interrogator) attempting to read information on the RFID tag via the interrogator needs to recognize the meaning of the information held in the RFID tag. For example, where plural kinds of interrogators read information from the same RFID tag, it has been impossible for each interrogator to read only the information that it requires.